India became the fourth country, after Russia, China and the United States, to achieve successful “Space Docking” capabilities essential for future human and space missions. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) informed on social media on Thursday that “spacecraft docking [has been] completed successfully.” The Indian space agency considered it a “historic moment”.
The Space Docking process was one of the key objectives of ISRO's SpaDeX mission, which was launched on December 31.
“India became the fourth country to successfully achieve Space Docking. Congratulations to the entire team! Congratulations to India!”, ISRO posted on X.
Prime Minister Modi congratulates
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the ISRO team for achieving this historic achievement. “Congratulations to our scientists at @isro and the entire space fraternity for the successful demonstration of satellite docking in space.”
He said the successful docking process “is an important stepping stone for India's ambitious space missions in the coming years.”
What does 'docking in space' mean?
“Docking” occurs when a spacecraft can maneuver and dock itself with a space station. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration defines docking as “mating operations in which an active vehicle flies into the mating interface under its own power.”
Meanwhile, ISRO explains that space docking technology is useful when multiple rockets are launched into space to achieve common mission objectives.
How was space docking carried out?
ISRO explained the SpaDeX docking process. It read: “Maneuver from 15 meters to 3 meters hold point completed. Docking has begun with precision, leading to the successful capture of spacecraft. Retraction has been completed smoothly, followed by bracing for stability. Docking has been completed successfully.” “
Later, the “successful separation of SpaDeX satellites” marked another milestone in India's space journey.
The SpaDex mission was launched with two small satellites – Chaser and Target – aboard a PSLV-C60 rocket. Earlier, the ISRO had explained that a small relative velocity was given between the Target and Chaser spacecraft at the time of separation from the launch vehicle.
This increasing speed allowed the Target spacecraft to build up an inter-satellite distance of 10-20 km relative to the Chaser within a day.
At the end of this “drift arrest maneuver”, the Target and Chaser were in the same orbit at identical speeds but separated by approximately 20 km, known as “Far Rendezvous”.
The Chaser then approached the target with increasingly close inter-satellite distances of 5 km, 1.5 km, 500 m, 225 m, 15 m and 3 m, eventually leading to the docking of the two spacecraft.
After successful docking and rigidization, the transfer of electrical power between the two satellites will be demonstrated before the two satellites are disconnected and separated to initiate the operation of their respective payloads.